


What's Left in a Wake

by One_Day



Category: Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn
Genre: And Nephenee is barely mentioned but oh well, F/F, Heather is kind of OOC, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, You probably: what the heck is this drivel, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-25 15:32:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10767162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/One_Day/pseuds/One_Day
Summary: Heather’s mother dies and she wonders when cute country girls who wear blue helmets and fight in wars became the only ones that could stop her from running. Or, that angsty poetic fic with next to no dialogue and run-on sentences everywhere.





	What's Left in a Wake

Any soldier with experience knows that tragedies are more commonplace than miracles. Lives are taken daily and faces that are so familiar can so easily disappear the next day, left behind in the mud, or on good days, buried deep within the soil with at best a dozen goodbyes. Tragedies are constant, and miracles are just that, an impossible possibility. It's merely a coincidence that Heather has already exhausted her one miracle.

She turns tail when the news arrives. Tragedy is commonplace here and every day is a risk, but knowing this doesn't ease the pain, doesn't make the day any easier to bear. Knowing isn't worth anything. Only the ignorant can afford bliss.

  
Familiar trees and buildings pass by in a blur, all greens and browns and stone and sunshine, all things that she shouldn't have and doesn't deserve. How, she wonders, how can she indulge shamelessly when she knows back home there is one who can no longer do so, one who was so faded and forgetful that the world forgot her too? How can she stand to draw breath when her purpose is crushed and a dear one passed away in the breeze?

  
Heather can picture it. Her mother, lying in bed, eyes closed but face turned to the north window as if waiting for her daughter to return home. It's a peaceful sort of melancholic scene but it fills her soul with discomfort.

  
Her fingers twitch to tear her hair from the scalp. If she did, she could watch the golden strands fall from her fingers like feathers, like some sacrificial symbol to a goddess that has run out of miracles to give. Maybe then she could say that she did enough. But then, maybe not. Heather digs her nails into her palm hard enough to leave marks instead.

In this world, mothers die and daughters do not attend their funeral. There isn't one to go to.

  
Rage bubbles up in her chest, hot and fast, when she thinks of her kind, sickly mother rotting away alone, desecrated by maggots and worms with not even a gravestone or bouquet of flowers to remember her. But the poor cannot afford such luxuries. They live to work and work to live and live so that they can eventually die with a little more than just a penny to their name.

She's a thief, of course she knows this.

But knowing doesn't buy bread, knowing only causes hurt for the strong and hurt for the weak and silence for the ones in between. Heather knows, and runs anyway. She shouldn't, for she cannot escape the knowing and she cannot escape the guilt, no matter how far she goes. Running just wastes her breakfast and makes her legs burn with invisible fire. Running is silly.

Her breath catches as her foot does, on some root or rock probably, but for all she cares it could be bones, and for a second she imagines it is. She almost laughs aloud at the dark irony. Karma is like some kind of curse given by ghosts.

  
But now all Heather knows is the falling, falling, falling, almost endless to watch as gritty earth and blades of grass come up to engulf her--

  
She doesn't expect to be caught, but she is. Well, more or less. The momentum is too strong, too great, and she tumbles into the long grass with some unwitting stranger. For a second they're just a mess of bumping knees and soft hair. Pebbles dig into backs through clothing and her clumsy savior isn't just some unknown passerby, she realizes.

  
It's looking up into familiar green eyes that she finally begins to cry. This is all wrong, Heather thinks. She shouldn't run, she shouldn't cry, not now, especially not now; she should be strong and buy flowers and visit her dead mother, anything to relieve the constriction in her chest.  
There's calloused palms on her cheeks, and she almost flinches at the roughness. She doesn't deserve this. She doesn't deserve this. Thieves don't get a shoulder to cry on or soft lips to chase away the ugly feelings.

  
So she pushes against it, fights and shouts out something like go away and wails and slumps back against the dirt because she's afraid of hurting anyone else, doesn't need more ghosts in her ears and on her skin.  
The sun is blinding and hot and the tears don't stop, they never stop, just rush out of her and cool on her skin and bubble forth again for a long time. Heather is a hiccuping mess by the end. She pauses and feels something burning behind her eyelids when she registers the soothing fingers running through her hair.

“Sorry cutie, but I thought I told you to leave.”

Her own voice is hoarse and so uncharacteristic that at first she doesn't recognize it. It sounds like hurting, and it sounds awful.

“I don't reckon that ya really want me to, Heather.”

And it's true. She doesn't admit it, but can't find it in her to pretend protest. A shudder passes through her chest and she breathes heavy, as if she can suck all the bad and the shame from her bones and exhale them into the breeze.

  
There's fingers in her hair and soft whispers in her ears and it's so beautiful and tragic that she could cry again but she can't because her mother can't and the wounds are still too raw, too fresh to pick apart and examine in the daylight. They don't talk about it, don't need to, because the truth is there and sometimes knowing isn't so bad if it's two, if it's shared like a hard won victory rather than held in one hand.

  
Slow exhalations of air caress her cheek and the ghosts are quiet. There's guilt still, how can there not be, but there's no blame, just living and breathing together breath by breath by breath by breath and Heather grins despite it all because what are the chances? To fall and be found and be caught all in one motion. Her mother, too, loved and was loved and died having loved and maybe love is the miracle to save them all and maybe it's all a part of knowing, like some big chain or cycle that explains what it means to be alive.

She wouldn't mind if it was.

**Author's Note:**

> If this didn't make sense it's probably because I wrote it at 1 AM on a school night... ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


End file.
